Urban planning plays a very important role in growth and sustainability of a city. The critical factor that affects the urban planning is population density and distribution. The infrastructure or places accessed by the public are needed to be optimized for crowd management so that crowd control is possible in case of emergency or otherwise. The estimation of crowd or population density at places such as train or bus stations help detect the peak period, and thereby helps in optimizing train schedule or bus schedule for easy distribution and dispersion of people. Some of the existing method and systems known to us are as follows:
EP2000962 by Raymond et al., discloses a method and system for estimating people at a location using mobile phones device. The method of estimating a number of people comprises counting a first group of people at a first location using a mechanical means as to obtain a first number; simultaneously counting at the first location the number of Bluetooth enabled mobile communication devices in the first group of people so as to obtain a second number. Determining the ratio of the first number and second number, further counting at a second location, the number of Bluetooth enabled communication devices so as to obtain a third number and using the ratio estimate the number of people at the second location. The disclosure further teaches that to maintain privacy of users of participating mobile communication device identification data is not captured or transmitted to a central server.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,742,769 by William D. Goodman discloses a method and apparatus for providing the number, distribution of people or devices in a geographic region based on active wireless device counts. Wireless communications centres report the number and types of active devices in the geographic region serviced by the wireless communications centre and indicate the number of devices in the serviced region. The active wireless device information related to a targeted geographical area is captured. The population counts are extrapolated from the device information for the targeted geographic areas. Traffic flow information is generated from changes in the device counts or population estimates over a time based on information of active devices in a region. The disclosure teaches use of cellular network which is usually hexagonal to detect the location of the device.
Weppner et al. in “Collaborative Crowd Density Estimation with Mobile Phones” discloses a method for crowd estimation using a Bluetooth at a location. However, the disclosure teaches the use of Bluetooth only for proximity detection and is based on assumption that each person will have only one device. The paper is silent on the location detection method thereof.
From the above-cited reference, there is a long felt need for a method, system and apparatus which estimates a number of people at a location detected using a portable communication device, both in an open and a closed loop. The existing disclosures for crowd estimation are limited to either work in a closed loop, e.g. bus or trains, or open loop, e.g. bus station or shopping malls. This limitation reduces their versatility. A plurality of systems and methods cited above either use only Bluetooth to detect crowdedness or other mechanical means in conjugation with Bluetooth, wherein the mechanical means are stationary, thereby limiting the usability.